We've been swimming in credit card receipts from Rudy Giuliani's administration today, and one thing in particular has struck us: in 2001, apparently with an eye to future globetrotting, Giuliani's administration sent a check for $400,000 to American Express. Though it was billed to the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office, an office that provides lawyers for indigent defendants, the money served as an advance against future travel and other expenses later incurred by the mayor's office and his security detail.

The unusually large prepayment, as yet unreported, adds weight to the theory that the Giuliani administration was using accounting gimmicks to obscure his office's travel expenditures.

With $400,000 prepaid on the Amex account, the mayor and his staff drew down on the credit card for a number of trips, including a handful out to the Hamptons, where Judith Nathan had her condo. Giuliani's administration ultimately spent approximately $100,000 of the $400,000 before leaving office in January, 2001.

Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, confirmed to us that his administration put a stop to the practice of putting funds for future travel in bulk on a credit card. Shortly after Bloomberg took office, American Express refunded $298,000, the remaining unused balance on the account. The move came shortly after the city comptroller sent the mayor a letter critical of the Giuliani adminsitration's practice of billing obscure city agencies for mayoral travel expenses.

But Loeser declined to comment when asked directly why the administration did this, and declined to comment when asked directly if the Bloomberg administration thought the Giuliani approach was problematic. "We process spending and travel differently," he said. "We use a different method. If we have government funded travel, we go through the city's travel agent."

Prepaying a city credit card with such a large amount is a procedure that "appears intentionally opaque," a high-level budget official under a previous administration told us. "You're not able to see clearly what [the money] is being used for," the official said, "because it's bundled in an AmEx card as opposed to as direct payments to vendors."

The unusual $400,000 prepayment is revealed in a letter from Giuliani's deputy director of fiscal operations that was contained in a package of documents City Hall released today, in response to reporters' questions about Wednesday's Politico story. You can see the letter here.

Giuliani's administration had done a similar thing in June of 2000, cutting checks for $54,000 worth of "prepayment" and billing them to the New York City Loft Board and other backwater agencies.

In comments to the Politico yesterday, Anthony Carbonetti, a longtime aide to Rudy Giuliani and his chief of staff when he was mayor, told Ben Smith that this was the first he'd heard that the city comptroller had been asking about the mayor's charges to backwater agencies.

So we asked the city comptroller's office. And spokesman Jeff Simmons told us that the audit, which focused on $34,000 of travel charges to one of those obscure agencies, the New York City Loft Board, had indeed begun in 2001, when Rudy was still mayor. The comptroller had made "repeated requests to the Loft Board and Mayor’s Office for further information and was stonewalled," he said.

Of course, that stonewalling has continued in the Bloomberg administration, which has refused to discuss the charges, citing "security," although they did refer the matter to the city Department of Investigations, where it seems to have disappeared.

The Washington Post has an update to Special Counsel Scott Bloch's alleged scheme to have geeks scrub his hard drive (for background click here). Turns out that Bloch has the files that he erased on a thumb drive, but he's not turning them over, no sir: They're personal. And it's sparked a good bit of squabbling amongst the White House's ineffectual investigative agencies (in this case the other party is the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general).

But here's the part that's good. Earlier this year, Bloch launched, to great fanfare, a sprawling investigation of Karl Rove's alleged efforts to politicize the federal government, but it seems not to have gotten very far. But maybe, Bloch's enemies are saying, the investigation was just a canny ploy to incapacitate the investigations of him:

Attorneys representing the staff members in the complaints against Bloch cited the latest dispute in calling for his resignation.

"At the time that he initiated this probe of Karl Rove, we thought he was doing this to make himself bulletproof so the White House could not take disciplinary action against him," said Debra Katz, an attorney for the staff members. Bloch denied that charge and said the Rove investigation is the responsibility of his office.

Ah, oversight.

Despite the fact that thousands of Iraqis have risked their lives and the security of their families by supporting U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq, the U.S. is excluding them from a fast-track refugee resettlement program. Approximately 100 Iraqi employees of the U.S embassy will receive preferential treatment while the rest must rely on the surge working, join 2 million other Iraqis and flee the country, or risk violent retribution for their aid to the U.S. (AP)

The government is presenting closing arguments in its case against suspected terrorists accused of plotting a homegrown religious insurrection against the American government that would include spectacular attacks. Administration officials once “trumpeted” the case as a major break in the “war on terror,” until the defendants turned out to be pathetic indigents. Since the defendants never possessed weapons or equipment and posed “no immediate threat,” they face 70 years based primarily on a videotaped oath to Al Qaeda that was guided by F.B.I. informants. (New York Times)

Yesterday, two unidentified witnesses (including a man with a shaved head and black leather jacket) testified before a federal grand jury in an investigation into Blackwater. A third witness in a brown leather jacket and military style crew cut also appeared. A court escort wore khaki cargo pants and the judge may have worn a black robe but nobody seems to know any details of the testimony or even the names of the witnesses. (AP)

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Courtesy of the Rudy Giuliani camp's efforts to spin the shag fund story, this is another installment in Great Moments in Damage Control! (from The New York Daily News):

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani."

When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that. I'm just going to talk about the Giuliani era," Lhota said. "I should only talk about what I know about."...

"I don't understand when it started. I don't understand why it started," Lhota said. "But I do know one thing: It was consistently done ... in no way shape or form did it imply a coverup."

The "no explanation" explanation seems to be the best spin the Giuliani camp has available.

Other than that, there's 1) the irrelevant focus on whether the NYPD reimbursed the backwater city agencies which originally were billed for the tryst costs -- a response that has only served to highlight that Giuliani is dodging the main issue, or 2) the fact that, in order to keep the mayor's budget artificially low, there seems to have been a policy of misallocation in his administration, of which the trips to Judith Nathan's Southampton condo were only a small part (though for some reason we haven't seen them try this line yet).

So "I don't understand when it started, I don't understand why it started" it is!

From the Blotter:

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

"She used the PD as her personal taxi service," said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

New York papers reported in 2000 that the city had provided a security detail for Nathan, who became Giuliani's third wife after his divorce from Donna Hanover, who also had her own police security detail at the same time.

We here at TPMm have dived headlong into the murky world of New York City accounting procedures to bring you the full story of Rudy Giuliani's security detail's mistress visit accounting shell game.

A general clarification first. The central allegation behind the story was that Giuliani, or someone else looking to protect Giuliani, stuck the costs for the security detail into the budgets of obscure city agencies like the New York City Loft Board. It's not clear right now, though, how much total those trips to visit Giuliani's girlfriend Judith Nathan in the Hamptons cost (the Politico counts eleven trips), or which trips were hid in which agency. Not all of the Mayor's Office's travel was stuck with the backwater agencies -- much of it was billed to the mayor's office. It's not clear (to us, at least) if any of the trips to the Hamptons were billed that way, though.

The comptroller found that Giuliani's office hid $143,867 worth of "non-local travel" expenses in random city agencies in 2000; they upped the slippery accounting in 2001, charging $435,215 in 2001. Given the charges for the Hamptons travel noted in the Politico piece, only a fraction of this was for the eleven trips.

In other words, Giuliani's office had something like a widespread policy of misallocation of which the trysts were just a part -- something that they'd also done for certain salaries, according to today's New York Times:

The administration of Mr. Giuliani’s successor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said in 2002, several months after taking office, that the Giuliani administration had kept the budget for the mayor’s office artificially low by paying more than $5 million in salaries through other city agencies. The agencies to which Mr. Giuliani billed the travel expenses were outside the mayor’s office.

The Times adds that the NYPD typically picked up the bill for the mayor's security detail. But a Bloomberg aide tells the New York Daily News that it is common for the security detail to bill the mayor's office and then for the NYPD to reimburse it. However, "the aide could not confirm it was past practice to shuffle costs among an alphabet soup of agencies." There lies the rub.

As a spokesman for Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), Gordon Hinkle earned his salt answering reporter's questions about whether his boss was on his way to prison. Now Hinkle will put that experience to work:

Gordon Hinkle, 34, was named deputy press secretary for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, according to a statement issued Wednesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office....

Hinkle has been Doolittle's communications director and senior field representative since February. He was among a handful of aides who received subpoenas in September from a Washington grand jury investigating Doolittle for his ties to jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He was asked to turn over documents but was not required to testify.

For those curious at home, if Doolittle, who is under investigation for his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, were in fact convicted of bribery charges, he'd end up in a federal penitentiary, not one in the California state system, so the two aren't likely to be reunited. Oh, well.

Hinkle is the third senior Doolittle aide to jump ship in recent months.

Over the summer, we reported on an under-the-radar executive order issued by President Bush allowing him to freeze or seize the U.S-based assets of anyone, potentially including U.S. citizens, he deems to threaten "the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq" or who "undermin(e) efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq."

The executive order was written so broadly as to alarm civil libertarians, who feared it was a back-door attempt at criminalizing the antiwar movement -- which Bush could conceivably argue posed a threat to Iraq by seeking to end the U.S. military presence -- or even unwitting donors to insurgent-linked charities. A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, Molly Millerwise, told us not to worry: "Be assured that the individuals and entities we add to this list are in full faith acting in an aggressive, violent and reckless way in financing the insurgency," she said.

Earlier this month,the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said: actually, maybe you should worry. It released a report (pdf) exploring "the contrast between the executive order's broad language and its narrow aim" and questioning why the Treasury Department hasn't released a list of eligible Iraq-related targets for the order.

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General Lute said on Monday we'll negotiate them. Ali al-Dabbagh wouldn't rule them out. But at the White House press gaggle today, Dana Perino denied the Bush administration's interest in long-term U.S. military bases in Iraq. From AFP:

"We do not seek permanent bases in Iraq," spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters after Lieutenant General Douglas Lute said Monday that the flashpoint issue would be part of negotiations to decide the future of US troops in Iraq.

Yawn. This standard formulation is nothing new for the administration. Zalmay Khalilzad, for instance, used the same words as far back as 2005, and the Iraq Study Group still considered the statement less than categorical. After all: what would we do if Iraq just happened to offer us open-ended access to certain military installations, or access renewable in x-number of years? Very, very rarely will a host country deny the U.S. a re-up on a military base: it took the Philippines nearly 100 years to get us out of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base.

There's a sense in which our presence at those bases wasn't "permanent," and another in which we didn't "seek" permanence. But it's one in which the literal meaning has to be interpreted in direct contradiction to the events and issues those words describe. Luckily, the American Philological Society calls that interpretation a "Perino."

No, he hasn't forgotten. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) took a step today towards contempt proceedings against Karl Rove, two of his former aides, and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten for not complying with subpoenas related to the U.S. attorney firings.

There hasn't been much movement since this summer, when Leahy issued the subpoenas. The administration claimed executive privilege for all documents and testimony sought, and said that Rove didn't need to even show up for a hearing. Rove's aides Sara Taylor and Scott Jennings appeared, but refused to discuss the firings. A subpoena for documents was sent to Bolten, and the White House refused.

Today, Leahy ruled that the claims of executive privilege and immunity were not legally valid, a necessary step toward issuing contempt citations in the committee. He didn't say when he might do that.

The timing for this might have something to do with what's going on in the House, where leaders have said they plan to schedule a floor vote to find former White House counsel Harriet Miers and Bolten in contempt for ignoring subpoenas there. That vote has been repeatedly delayed and is currently expected to take place next month.

Admitted Duke Cunningham briber Thomas Kontogiannis is extremely good at avoiding jail time, mostly thanks to his penchant for snitching on his partners in crime at just the right moment. This time -- after snitching on his nephew, financier John Michael -- his cold, cold heart is helping him avoid lockup in a different manner.

In advance of a sentencing hearing slated for next week, Tommy K's lawyers have filed papers contending that he's far too sick to do any serious time. He faces a maximum of ten years in prison, but his heart just isn't in it. The North County Times:

The businessman, in his pledge to cooperate with the government, has also admitted to as much as $100 million in mortgage fraud unrelated to the Cunningham case, according to the newly filed court documents.

But Kontogiannis -- who has been charged with bribery three times in the last 14 years -- has a grave heart condition, his attorneys argued in the documents. They asked the court to postpone the sentencing so their client can have bypass surgery.

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As a result of a freedom of information act request filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a federal judge has told the Bush administration that it must release records of lobbying contracts with telecommunications companies. The ruling suggests that the government is moving too slowly, especially given the fact that Congress is scheduled to debate telecom immunity soon. (San Francisco Chronicle)

The Interior Department Inspector General completed a second investigation into DOI official Julie MacDonald for "interfering" in areas where she had no expertise and participating in decisions where she had a conflict of interest. An environmental group plans to file multiple lawsuits over some 50 decisions by MacDonald. (McClatchy)

Over the next few months FEMA will close all of the trailer camps for victims of the 2005 hurricanes. A FEMA spokesman said that the formaldehyde issue did play a role in the decision. A lawyer with Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington agreed that “it’s probably a good idea to get people out of trailers..., but not at the expense of making them homeless.” (New York Times)

Twelve states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to compel the agency to reverse course and restore all of the chemical reporting requirements that were once included in its Toxics Release Inventory program. The EPA had recently ruled that companies that released fewer than 5,000 pounds of toxic chemicals (the old rule used a benchmark of 500) could file less detailed forms that make it harder for communities to track toxic waste. (New York Times)

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It's been an eventful week for the Lott clan. On Monday, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) announced that he'd be retiring late this year. The next day, FBI agents raided the law office of his brother-in-law, Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. Yesterday, Scruggs, his son, and three associates were indicted for bribery.

Scruggs is a hotshot plaintiff's lawyer who famously cleaned up from lawsuits against big tobacco. His recent business has focused on Katrina-related litigation, especially against State Farm Insurance.

He'd better have a great criminal defense lawyer, because the indictment from the U.S. attorney for Mississippi's Northern District is devastating (you can read it here).

Here's the basic scheme: after Scruggs led a $80 million settlement between State Farm and hundreds of clients, an attorney who had formerly worked with Scruggs disputed the $26.5 million chunk of that settlement to Scruggs' law group. Scruggs wanted his money, and he and his associates decided that the best way to get it was to bribe the county judge presiding over the case, Henry Lackey. But Lackey went to the feds as soon as Scruggs' associates made the overture. He wore a wire. And things went downhill from there. For instance, here's what a lawyer working for Scruggs said to the judge, according to the indictment:

"...[M]my relationship with Dick [Scruggs] is such that he and I can talk very private [sic] about these kinds of matters and I have the fullest confidence that if the court, you know, is inclined to rule... in favor... everything will be good.... The only person in the world outside of me and you that has discussed this is me and Dick [Scruggs].... We, uh, like I say, it ain't but three people in the world that know anything about this...and two of them are sitting here and the other one...the other one, uh, being Scruggs...he and I, um, how shall I say, for over the last five or six years there, there are bodies buried that, that you know, that he and I know where...where are, and, and, my, my trust in his, mine in him and his in mine, in me, I am sure are the same."

The indictment is replete with similarly, um, problematic quotations. There are plenty of mentions of the "package" and the "order" among Scruggs' associates (apparently conversations on tapped phones). In October and November of this year, Scruggs, through his associates, paid the judge $40,000 (and intended to pay $10,000 more). And when it came time for the order to be prepared, the indictment quotes one of Scruggs' associates as saying to two others (one of them Scruggs' son), "we paid for this ruling; let's be sure it says what we want it to say."

It's like I said: it doesn't look good for Scruggs. As for Lott, there's no indication that he had anything to do with the scheme. Whether the impending indictment, which seems to have caught Scruggs very much by surprise, had anything to do with his sudden retirement, remains (like the many other competing theories) unclear.

Ali al-Dabbagh doesn't foresee the Iraqi parliament rejecting the upcoming long-term security assurance President Bush intends to extend Iraq. He must not have talked to Saleh Mutlaq.

Mutlaq is the somewhat dyspeptic head of the smaller of two Sunni blocs in parliament. Both blocs exhibit profound distrust for Nouri al-Maliki. But Mutlaq is even less accommodating, and he's closer to the "Sunni extremist" whom Dabbagh expects will object to the deal. Sure enough, Mutlaq objects to the deal.

Via IraqSlogger (sub. req.), Mutlaq told the newspaper Kul al- 'Iraq that the Iraqi people -- meaning his constituency -- would see the deal as "a U.S. imposition." The only way to avoid that perception would be... if the U.S. set a timetable to withdraw from Iraq. That's clearly at cross-purposes with the point of the security deal.

So cross Mutlaq off from the list of the deal's supporters. The question now becomes what kind of coalition Mutlaq can cobble together to stop the deal.

It's not much of a mystery why Bernie Kerik and Rudy Giuliani got along so well. They both showed a certain ingenuity when it came to leveraging New York City resources for trysts.

Kerik, of course, had his 9/11 love nest. And Giuliani, well:

As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.

The documents, obtained by Politico under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

At the time, the mayor’s office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing “security.”

The Hamptons visits resulted in hotel, gas and other costs for Giuliani’s New York Police Department security detail.

Sure enough, the New York City Loft Board, the Office for People With Disabilities, the Procurement Policy Board, and the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office all proved good hiding places for expenses ($34,000, $10,054, $29,757, and $400,000, respectively) that Giuliani would rather not explain.

But "an unnamed Giuliani aide" gives it a whirl anyway:

A Giuliani aide who would speak only on the condition of anonymity denied that the unorthodox billing practices were aimed at hiding the expenses, citing "accounting" and noting that they were billed to units of the mayor's office, not to outside city agencies.

The aide declined to discuss Giuliani's visits to Long Island.

Swing and a miss!

The piece is heaped with priceless details, not the least of which is that Giuliani scheduled haircuts shortly before three of the visits to the Hamptons.

When John Tanner, chief of the Civil Rights Division's voting section, appeared before a Congressional panel last month, he was upbraided by Democrats for his "ineffectiveness." Little did they know that as the section, probably the most politicized in the Justice Department under the Bush Administration, has done less and less to protect African-American voters from discrimination, Tanner has been seeing the country on the taxpayers' dime.

He even managed to make taxpayer-funded trips to Hawaii in three consecutive years, two of them a week long. One Department lawyer who accompanied Tanner on his first trip took the earliest available flight back after having completed all necessary work in just two business days. But Tanner insisted on staying a full week, despite the lack of apparent Department business. It's a crime for government officials to use public funds for personal travel.

A review of Justice Department documents obtained by TPMmuckraker shows just how extensive Tanner's travel has been. From May of 2005 when Tanner became chief of the section through the end of 2006, he took 36 trips, traveling 97 days over those 19 months. By comparison, Tanner's predecessor Joe Rich took only two trips from 2003 through his retirement in April 2005, a total of six days of taxpayer funded travel over those 28 months.

"It's important for a chief to be in the office to run the office," Rich told me, explaining why he'd traveled so little. Most of his travel was for voting rights conferences and speaking engagements, he said. Chiefs rarely travel for cases, he said.

Voting section lawyers, upset with Tanner's abuse of his authority as chief, have filed at least two complaints in recent months with the Justice Department inspector general concerning Tanner's travel and other issues (you can read one here). Another complaint, which we published last month, dealt with the travel of Tanner's deputy Susana Lorenzo-Giguere. A Department spokesman said then that the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) was investigating whether Lorenzo-Giguere had filed certain lawsuits in order to get paid while living at her Cape Cod beach house. Tanner is also under investigation for approving that arrangement. It's unclear whether OPR is also investigating other trips by Tanner or Lorenzo-Giguere.

In the meantime, according to two sources, both Tanner and acting section deputy Susana Lorenzo-Giguere have been banned indefinitely from any further travel. The Justice Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.

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President Bush might not require Congressional approval for the upcoming U.S.-Iraq security agreement. But al-Dabbagh said the Maliki government will need to secure a blessing for the deal from the Iraqi parliament. And even though the deal will cover a U.S. military presence for years to come, Dabbagh doesn't expect any parliamentary turbulence -- let alone refusal.

The final arrangement, which the U.S. expects to reach in July 2008, "definitely needs an approval" from parliament, Dabbagh told TPMmuckraker. That's because Article 58, Section 4 of the Iraqi constitution ensures the parliament must approve "international treaties and agreements by a two-thirds majority."

Jason Sigger of Armchair Generalist asked whether Maliki could get parliamentary approval for a deal perceived to pave the way for an indefinite U.S. presence. After all, in May, 144 of 275 parliamentarians, led by Moqtada al-Sadr's faction, called for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops. Dabbagh replied that "not only Shia extremists, but also Sunni extremists ... are going to object." But he didn't forsee a problem. "[The] U.S. people should have confidence that the Iraqi people are accepting this without any pressure," he said. "It is their choice to have a lasting agreement."

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Ali al-Dabbagh, the official spokesman for the government of Iraq, refused to rule out granting the U.S. military permanent bases in Iraq during next year's negotiations over the shape of a long-term U.S.-Iraq security agreement.

TPMmuckraker had the opportunity to speak with Dabbagh through a blogger conference call set up by the Department of Defense. He declined to speak with any specificity about long-term basing rights for U.S. troops or about Iraq's desired size for a residual U.S. presence. "We are not speaking of permanent bases yet. It is too early to speak of this," he told TPMmuckraker. The level of U.S. troops in Iraq in the future, he said, should be linked to "the status of Iraq's security forces. As long as Iraqi forces are ready, then the number will diminish."

I followed up by asking if the Iraqis would rule out granting the U.S. permanent bases in the upcoming negotiations. He said that discussion on the issue has not begun in Iraq. "This is not an easy issue, having bases here in Iraq," Dabbagh said. "It will be highly debated, but at the end it is a presence. Is it permanent, or for how many years -- five, ten -- this is an issue that is going to be discussed with the political parties," and with the United States, to reach "a common view." He added that "it is very difficult to predict right now, what level of permanence" Iraq will ultimately grant the U.S. military.

Asked by a Pentagon public affairs officer if he had any message for U.S. troops who had served or are still serving in Iraq, Dabbagh replied, "In the end, Iraqis will never forget such sacrifice." That's surely true. After all, that sacrifice isn't going to end.

On Monday, commenting on President Bush's forthcoming long-term security guarantee to Iraq, top White House war adviser Douglas Lute said, "We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress." In other words, Bush can commit the U.S. to protecting the security of Iraq -- including, as Lute said, enduring U.S. bases in Iraq and a residual troop presence -- without Congressional approval. Can he?

"That reflects historical practice," says Peggy McGuinness, a former State Department official and current law professor at the University of Missouri.

To boil down an arcane legal debate to a thick constitutional sauce, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, says that the President can enter into treaties with foreign countries "provided two thirds of the Senators present concur." But not every foreign agreement is what McGuiness calls a "capital-T Treaty." Security guarantees, and particularly garrisoning agreements for U.S. troops abroad -- a category called a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA -- are not usually treated by the executive branch as capital-T Treaties. Historically, Congress doesn't insist that the executive does, and the Supreme Court has never ruled that all such arrangements require Senate advice and consent. As a result of this historical practice, "a SOFA is usually a purely executive agreement," McGuiness explains.

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The federal grand jury investigating Blackwater Worldwide heard witnesses yesterday as a private lawsuit accused its employees of ignoring orders and abandoning their posts shortly before taking part in a Baghdad shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead. The civil complaint also accuses Blackwater of failing to give drug tests to its guards in Baghdad even though an estimated 25% were using steroids or other "judgment altering substances." (USA Today)

For the second day in a row, U.S. soldiers accidentally killed Iraqi civilians yesterday when they fired a warning shot on a vehicle that they thought was a threat. The military reports two people died and four were injured when an American soldier fired at a minibus that was transporting workers to a bank, but Iraqi police said four people were killed and two injured. The minibus was driving near a U.S. military outpost on a road where only car traffic is permitted, and the soldier fired after the minibus failed to respond to a signal to stop. (McClatchy)

Lawyers for several Guantanamo Bay detainees are suing a subsidiary of Boeing for their involvement in extraordinary rendition flights to secret prisons where the detainees were allegedly tortured. The U.S. government is asking a federal court to dismiss the suit because it could “risk the disclosure of highly classified information.” (Guardian)

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It's just not enough that a number of administration officials have been investigated for malfeasance; the Bush Administration takes it the extra mile. The man who's charged with investigating some of that malfeasance is himself under investigation. And he's clearly no slouch at malfeasance.

Scott Bloch heads the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an odd little agency that was set up to police federal employees of infractions that do not rise to the criminal level. The OSC's main brief is enforcing the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using government resources for political ends (so Bloch should be a busy man). He's also supposed to make sure whistleblowers do not suffer retaliation. The OSC reports to the White House.

Bloch himself has been under investigation since 2005 for a variety of infractions, including retaliating against employees who took issue with internal policies and discriminating against those who were gay or members of religious minorities. At the direction of the White House, the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been pressing on with an investigation of Bloch.

Which makes this all the more curious. From The Wall Street Journal:

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

Bypassing his agency's computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In an interview, [Bloch] confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer....

Mr. Bloch had his computer's hard disk completely cleansed using a "seven-level" wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later. He also directed Geeks on Call to erase laptop computers that had been used by his two top political deputies, who had recently left the agency....

Geeks on Call visited Mr. Bloch's government office in a nondescript office building on M Street in Washington twice, on Dec. 18 and Dec. 21, 2006, according to a receipt reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The total charge was $1,149, paid with an agency credit card, the receipt shows. The receipt says a seven-level wipe was performed but doesn't mention any computer virus.

Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington's Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. "We don't do a seven-level wipe for a virus," he said.

The punchline to all this is that even if Bloch were a paragon of integrity, his investigations of administration wrongdoing would be nearly pointless. For instance, Bloch launched an investigation of General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan after she asked her fellow employees "How can we help our candidates?" The comments had come after a political briefing by Karl Rove's aide. Bloch's investigation concluded that Doan should be fired. But that was in June. Bloch made his recommendation to the White House, which has done nothing since. And as for Bloch's wide-ranging probe of Karl Rove's political briefings to federal officials throughout the government? Don't count on any results. It's enough to make a man cynical.

Of all the unqualified political hacks that the Bush Administration has placed in government positions, Julie MacDonald, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks at the Interior Department, has always held a special place in my heart.

While in her position, where she was charged with overseeing policy decisions on endangered species and other wildlife, MacDonald did what she could to make industry lobbyists happy. If government scientists produced inconvenient data, she just changed it. And while she didn't trust scientists all that much, she had no problem sharing interior agency documents with an "online friend" she met "through internet role-playing games." She told the Interior Department's inspector general that she'd shared the documents because she felt "frustrated at times" and wanted "to have another set of eyes give an unfiltered opinion of them."

Unfortunately, the inspector general's report made life difficult for MacDonald. And rather than explain herself, she resigned before a scheduled Congressional hearing in May.

After her departure, the Department underwent a review of a number of her decisions at the request of House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall (D-WV). And today, the Department told Rahall that seven of the eight decisions the Department reviewed will be overturned.

The reactions to President Bush's forthcoming long-term security guarantees to Iraq just keep on piling in. Here's Jim Manley, spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the Democratic leader in the Senate. He's reacting in particular to General Lute's statement that Bush doesn't need Congressional buy-in for any security deal with Maliki:

"Nearly six years into the war, the President still fails to understand that 'go-it-alone' is a not a successful strategy. Just as he ignored facts and the world community in getting us into this war and is ignoring the demands of Congress and the American people to get us out, President Bush is now trying to unilaterally negotiate an agreement with Iraq on security -- an area [where] the President has absolutely zero credibility."

Speaking of going it alone, it's worth noting that with the end to the United Nations Security Council mandate for the occupation -- which Maliki heralded in a televised address -- the remaining members of the Coalition of the Willing will no longer have a legal basis for staying in Iraq. After 2008, it's just us and the Iraqis. (And the insurgents. And the Mahdi Army. And the other militias. And whatever al-Qaeda in Iraq remains.)

Who else would he raise money for? From ABC:

A Pennsylvania man convicted in a notorious corruption case played host to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at a fundraiser last night, despite the Giuliani campaign's public efforts to distance itself from the man.

Bob Asher, a major Pennsylvania Republican player as a national party committeeman, was one of four hosts for the $2,300-a-person event. Asher was convicted in 1986 on charges stemming from a bribery scheme intended to win a $300,000 state government contract. The case gained national attention when his co-defendant in the case, Pennsylvania state treasurer R. Budd Dwyer, committed suicide at a televised news conference. Asher was sentenced to serve one year in prison....

"That's 21 years ago, so we'll let that go. I did what I did, and I've paid may dues for it," Asher told ABC News outside the event last night....

Asher announced earlier this year he had agreed to be Giuliani's Pennsylvania political chairman, according to the New York Times, although the Giuliani campaign disputed that.

When asked about his role in the campaign last night, Asher said, "There's been no one named in Pennsylvania to any post here at all."

It may not be the most compelling argument to an Iraqi civilian, but it surely resonates within the private-security industry. One of Blackwater's competitors, the London-based ArmorGroup, anticipates a lackluster quarterly profit report -- something the company blames, in part, on the Iraqi government's hostility to private security contractors after the Nisour Square shootings.

ArmorGroup International PLC, a British private security company, warned Tuesday that profits will fall this year because of the fallout from competitor Blackwater Worldwide's involvement in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians.

The news sent the company's share price plunging 40 percent on the London Stock Exchange.

ArmorGroup also announced that David Seaton was stepping down as chief executive, effective immediately, as the company reorganizes.

"The award and mobilization of a number of major contracts in Iraq has been severely affected by the Blackwater incident in Baghdad on 16 September," the company said in a trading update to the London Stock Exchange.

Imagine that: shooting civilians is bad for business.

Yesterday, General Douglas Lute, a top Iraq adviser to President Bush, said that the administration didn't require Senate ratification for its forthcoming long-term security guarantee to the Iraqis. It's unclear whether that's true, and I'll tell you more as soon as I know it. But even if it is, the Iraqi constitution stipulates that Iraq's parliament has to ratify any such agreement. And the Iraqi parliament is a lot more hostile to the idea of hosting U.S. troops indefinitely than the U.S. Senate is.

Take a look at Article 58, Section 4 of the Iraqi constitution. It stipulates that the Iraqi parliament shall ratify "international treaties and agreements by a two-thirds majority." Whether or not President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki can finagle the deal so that it's not a treaty -- as Lute suggested yesterday -- it most certainly is an "agreement."

And it's hard to see the votes for a two-thirds parliamentary majority.

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Of all the campaign strategies available, perhaps this wasn't the best one.

Last spring, Gary Dodds was trailing in the Democratic primary for New Hampshire's 1st District Congressional seat when his crashed car was found empty. He went missing for more than a day, creating a national story about the missing candidate. He later explained that following the collision, he'd stumbled into the woods, crossed the river, and then lay down under a pile of leaves, where he was eventually found. Police were immediately suspicious of Dodds' story, a suspicion that later led to charges for false public alarms and falsifying physical evidence. Now prosecutors are saying he made all that up to gin up publicity:

In a motion filed at Strafford County Superior Court last week, prosecutors seek to introduce evidence that Dodds had taken out two mortgages on property without the approval of his wife, Cynthia, to fund his campaign and that his campaign had received letters from the Federal Election Commission indicating they were contemplating instigating an audit into discrepancies in campaign finance reports.

"It would be argued that Mr. Dodds fabricated the story he told police and falsified his physical appearance in an attempt to gain publicity to help propel his campaign for the United States Congress," the motion reads. "The state would argue that Mr. Dodds believed the publicity garnered from this accident would increase the visibility of his campaign, allowing him to pay back the mortgages, avoid further FEC investigation, and right a campaign that was lagging."

Police have earlier said that Dodds seems to have faked a head injury and lied about swimming across the river. When he was found, his feet were so wet that police had to pour water out of his shoes, but the rest of his body was dry. And when they questioned him about how the water had tasted, he'd gotten the answer wrong (it's brackish). The list goes on.

It's still unclear to me whether police think Dodds staged the whole thing from top to bottom, or whether the idea struck him after he'd had his private fender bender. In any case, other campaigns should be wary of adopting a similar strategy: Dodds got little more than a 1,000 votes in the primary (Dem Carol Shea-Porter went on to win the general election).

An arcane section of a bill passed last December grants special rights to just three crab fishing companies. All of them have heads who have made substantial contributions to Representative Don Young (R-AK), and two of the three also have ties to Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK). According to the watchdog group Public Citizen, the earmark is “typical of Don Young-style legislating” - it “smacks of political favoritism, sidestepped the normal process for changing federal fishery rules, wasn't subject to a public debate or hearing, and was inserted into a major bill at the last minute.” (Anchorage Daily News)

Representative Bob Filner (D-CA) was scheduled for trial this week over allegations that he assaulted an airline employee at Dulles. But Filner has avoided the public spectacle by entering an Alford plea to trespassing, which means that Filner does not admit guilt but acknowledges that sufficient evidence existed for a conviction. (New York Times)

The Army is retrofitting 1 million combat uniforms because soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan reported "crotch durability problems." Ripped inseams can be a serious distraction for an unlucky soldier, and Army officials promise the new pants will be more durable. (USA Today)

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Saved! That's one less trial Bernie Kerik -- and Rudy Giuliani -- have to worry about.

Granted, Kerik still faces trial on a sixteen-count criminal indictment for accepting bribes, cheating on taxes, and lying to the federal government. But no doubt it's good news for the Giuliani camp. Every little bit counts!

Yesterday, Eric DeRavin, a former New York City Correction Department officer, settled his discrimination lawsuit against the city. He'd charged that Kerik, when he led the department back in the 90's, had passed him over for promotions because he was African-American -- and because DeRavin made the mistake of crossing Kerik's mistress, Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero (one of Kerik's two mistresses who later visited Kerik at his 9/11 love nest). The court dismissed the claims about Pinero, but the city settled on the race discrimination claim for $125,000. The trial was due to begin soon, and Kerik was sure to testify. "I'm going to accept $125,000 and go away," DeRavin said, but added: "I hope Mr. Kerik gets his just desserts."

So Giuliani is spared the spectacle of Kerik testifying about why he'd passed over an African-American officer six times for promotion, the renewed focus on Kerik's romantic liaisons, and questions about why he hadn't been concerned about the fact that two different correction officers had sued the city, alleging that Kerik had retaliated against them because they'd crossed his mistress.

Because this wasn't the only suit, and it isn't the first time that the city has settled. Another correction officer, Herbert Reed, sued the city, claiming that Kerik and his underlings filed bogus disciplinary and sexual harassment actions against him after he wrote up a friend of Pinero's for insubordination. The city settled that one for $250,000 in 2003.

These were both longstanding suits (DeRavin filed in 2000, Reed in 2001), filed long before Giuliani was forced to break with Kerik in the wake of his disastrous nomination to be Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security in December, 2004. But Giuliani would probably say that we should file it away as just another aspect (click here for all the aspects) of Giuliani's admitted "mistake" in supporting Kerik for the nomination (after first appointing him commisioner of corrections, then the NYPD, then making him his business partner). Everybody makes mistakes, right?

If you're like most Americans and most Iraqis, chances are you think a normal state of affairs between the two nations is not one in which, say, U.S. troops walk the streets of Baghdad. Well, all you've done is prove your unfitness to serve in the Bush administration. Today, the administration has spun the forthcoming permanent U.S. troop presence as amounting to a "normalization" of relations.

Here's the White House fact sheet on the deal:

[T]his Declaration is the first step in a three-step process that will normalize U.S.-Iraqi relations in a way which is consistent with Iraq's sovereignty and will help Iraq regain its rightful status in the international community – something both we and the Iraqis seek.

And here's National Security Council staffer Brett McGurk:

“It sends a signal to the region … that the United States is committed to Iraq for the long term -- that we’re not packing up and leaving,” McGurk said. “But that nature of our commitment over time will transition, as it should, and that we will have a normalized, bilateral relationship with Iraq.”

Credit the administration with a sudden candor. For the first time in four years, it's admitting that its conception of a normal Iraq is one in which the U.S. military operates there forever and ever and ever. It's not quite 6 p.m. Are there any other conspiracy theories sure to arouse anti-American sentiment in the Middle East that the administration would like to confirm before quitting time?

Here's the full text of the joint Bush-Maliki agreement on principles for a long-term U.S. security commitment to Iraq. There's some hilarious obfuscatorese on the question of bases and troop levels. ("Support will be provided consistent with mechanisms and arrangements to be established in the bilateral cooperation agreements mentioned herein" -- in context, I promise, that translates to "let's worry about defining the U.S. troop presence in the final agreement.") But take a look at this key economics "principle":

Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq.

In fairness, it's the job of the U.S. in bilateral negotiations to try to win the most favorable investment environment for American business. But that's not so difficult when your military is keeping your negotiating partners, you know, alive. Already $6 billion worth of Iraq contracts are under criminal review. How much more Iraqi business could flow to Americans? It's hard to say, but it looks like Stuart Bowen will have a long, long career ahead of him.

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Bernie Kerik had a talent for making wealthy friends -- and then hitting them up for money. It was a talent that prosecutors say crossed the line into bribery on at least one occasion.

Over the weekend, The New York Times revealed the details of another one of those deals. In 2003, while Kerik was on his short stint with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, Israeli billionaire and industrialist Eitan Wertheimer loaned Kerik $250,000.

But it wasn't what you'd call a straightforward loan. The money went first to Kerik's friend and Brooklyn businessman Shimon Cohen, who then passed it on to Kerik. It was provided with no interest, no conditions, and seemingly no questions asked.

There's even more grounds for suspicion. The loan only came to light after the Bronx district attorney's office and New York City’s Department of Investigation launched an investigation of Kerik's personal finances in 2005. They interviewed Cohen in June of that year about the loan -- he fessed up to having given the money, but said nothing about the fact that Wertheimer had financed it. Nine days later, two years after the loan was originally given, Kerik paid off the loan in full -- with interest.

The indictment of Kerik earlier this month included a charge of lying to the Federal Government about the loan (Both Wertheimer and Cohen are identified only as John Does in the indictment.). That's because when Kerik filled out a financial disclosure form that covered his time in Iraq, he didn't report it. Prosecutors pointedly mention that Wertheimer's companies do "business with the federal government." In other words, it was precisely the sort of conflict of interest that financial disclosure requirements are designed to expose.

Now, the open question is what Wertheimer thought he was getting for his money.

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Whatever rationale the Bush administration cooks up for our soon-to-be-permanent presence in Iraq, chances are it won't compare to Nouri al-Maliki's. Maliki went on Iraqi TV today to say that the joint agreement reached today with President Bush actually means that the U.S. presence in Iraq is... wait for it... coming to an end!

"The United States has promised that the multinational forces will stay under a United Nations mandate only until the end of 2008," Mr Maliki said in a televised address.

"The final extension for the multinational forces under the UN mandate will finish in 2008."

Mr Maliki said Iraq was not a threat to any of its neighbours as it was now a "democratic state".

"It is no longer a danger to the interests of the region. We are saying frankly that there is no justification for Iraq to stay under Chapter VII. All the justification created by the former regime is now over," he said.

Mr Maliki also said that Iraq had reached the stage where it did not need multinational forces and that the country should be allowed to become a "normal state".

Now, given the crippling legacy of U.N. sanctions during the 1990s, the expiration of a U.N. security mandate has an emotional resonance for Iraqis that Maliki is rather cynically exploiting. Left apparently unstated is that after the U.N. mandate expires, Maliki will personally broker a new "justification" for the U.S.'s Mesopotamian excursion. What kind of government blatantly misrepresents to its public the implications of its actions? Why, the kind of government to which we bequeath long-term security guarantees, of course!

Could Congress stop a Bush administration-brokered deal to garrison U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely? Not according to General Douglas Lute, the so-called "war czar." Here's Lute at today's gaggle:

Q General, will the White House seek any congressional input on this?

GENERAL LUTE: In the course of negotiations like this, it's not -- it is typical that there will be a dialogue between congressional leaders at the negotiating table, which will be run out of the Department of State. We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress.

Q Is the purpose of avoiding the treaty avoiding congressional input?

GENERAL LUTE: No, as I said, we have about a hundred agreements similar to the one envisioned for the U.S. and Iraq already in place, and the vast majority of those are below the level of a treaty.

Lute said the White House intends to conclude negotiations on an enduring security guarantee with the Maliki government in July. Permanent military bases and residual troop levels will be specified in the final accord, he said.

Oh, for the halcyon days when the Bush administration saw fit to deny that it sought a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq. Let's take a look at what senior administration officials said way back when, shall we?

President George W. Bush, April 13, 2004:

"As a proud and independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation and neither does America."

then-U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, August 14, 2005:

"We do not seek permanent military bases in Iraq. Our goal is to help Iraq stand on its own feet, to be able to look after its own security, and to do what we can to help achieve that goal."

Condoleezza Rice, April 4, 2006, quoted by Agence France-Presse (Via Nexis):

Rice would not say when all U.S. forces would return home and did not directly answer Rep. Steven Rothman, a Democrat, when he asked, "Will the bases be permanent or not?"

"I would think that people would tell you, `We're not seeking permanent bases really pretty much anywhere in the world these days.' We are, in fact, in the process of removing base structure from a lot of places," Rice replied.

Tony Snow, June 15, 2006:

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It's hard to believe, but presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and Giuliani, the law partner and businessman, seem to be at odds:

Giuliani, the Republican presidential front-runner, last month pledged to ``get rid of'' so-called earmarks, which cost taxpayers about $13 billion this year, saying his party should promote ``fiscal discipline.'' Just weeks later, Bracewell & Giuliani LLP won $3 million worth of projects for its clients in defense-spending legislation....

In all, Bracewell & Giuliani sought federal earmarks for 14 companies this year, 11 of which hired the firm after Giuliani joined in March 2005, Senate records show. Giuliani, 63, isn't registered as a lobbyist. The firm paid him $1.2 million last year, according to his personal financial-disclosure form.

The defense-spending legislation approved this month by Congress contained funding for three of those clients, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based advocacy group that opposes special projects that lawmakers insert in spending bills without public debate.

Now, this is Giuliani's law firm, not his consultancy Giuliani Partners. But it's yet another example of why Giuliani has a motivation to keep his business side quiet.

So it begins. After years of obfuscation and denial on the length of the U.S.'s stay in Iraq, the White House and the Maliki government have released a joint declaration of "principles" for "friendship and cooperation." Apparently President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the declaration during a morning teleconference.

Naturally, the declaration is euphemistic, and doesn't refer explicitly to any U.S. military presence.

-- Iraq's leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America, and we seek an enduring relationship with a democratic Iraq. We are ready to build that relationship in a sustainable way that protects our mutual interests, promotes regional stability, and requires fewer Coalition forces.

-- In response, this Declaration is the first step in a three-step process that will normalize U.S.-Iraqi relations in a way which is consistent with Iraq's sovereignty and will help Iraq regain its rightful status in the international community – something both we and the Iraqis seek. The second step is the renewal of the Multinational Force-Iraq's Chapter VII United Nations mandate for a final year, followed by the third step, the negotiation of the detailed arrangements that will codify our bilateral relationship after the Chapter VII mandate expires.

A "democratic Iraq" here means the Shiite-led Iraqi government. The current political arrangement will receive U.S. military protection against coups or any other internal subversion. That's something the Iraqi government wants desperately: not only is it massively unpopular, even among Iraqi Shiites, but the increasing U.S.-Sunni security cooperation strikes the Shiite government -- with some justification -- as a recipe for a future coup.

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What? Permanent U.S. bases in Iraq? I've never heard of anything so absurd! Why, you -- you -- you conspiracy theorist! How can you be so shrill, so irresponsible, so, so, so...

Oh, wait.

Iraq's government is prepared to offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq and preferential treatment for American investments in return for an American guarantee of long-term security including defense against internal coups, The Associated Press learned Monday.

The proposal, described to the AP by two senior officials familiar with the issue, is one of the first indications that the United States and Iraq are beginning to explore what their relationship might look like, once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence.

Make no mistake: this is Nouri al-Maliki offering the U.S. a permanent presence in return for guaranteeing the security of his government. (Would-be PM Ayad Allawi can't make President Bush a counteroffer as good as that.) In exchange for a platform for the indefinite projection of American power throughout the Middle East, the Bush Administration probably considers protection for Maliki and his coterie to be a small price to pay. No wonder the negotiation of a mandate for foreign troops in Iraq at the United Nations -- where this deal would begin to take shape -- is one of Bush's new post-benchmark benchmarks.

Who could have seen this coming?

The Pentagon’s statistics show that 4,471 troops have sustained brain trauma in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the actual number is five times that, according to USA Today’s investigation. One reason why the Pentagon has missed more than 20,000 brain injuries is that wounds discovered after a soldier leaves Iraq are not counted. (USA Today)

Guards from Unity Resources Group who shot and killed two Iraqi women on October 9 also shot and seriously wounded a man in June when they raked his van with automatic weapons near a Baghdad kindergarten. Now, RTI International, the North Carolina-based firm that hired Unity and works under a U.S. contract to help promote democracy in Iraq, has discovered internal reports about that second, previously undisclosed shooting. The firm initially said it had no information about the event – maybe because Unity deleted the event from its records. (Washington Post)

The Sunday Times of London reveals that several European countries have assisted the U.S. in transporting detainees to Guantanamo Bay, despite their officials' public objections to the widespread human rights abuses and torture there. At least five European nations provided airstrips and have allowed more than 700 suspects to cross their territory. Officials from those countries believe this makes them complicit in crimes. (TimesOnline)

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When last we left the Bush administration's so-called benchmarks for strategic progress in Iraq -- that is, the political progress that military success allows -- they weren't being met, and the White House didn't care. Now that the year's almost over and the administration is beginning to bring the "surge" troops home, it's worth asking: what happened to the benchmarks? The New York Times reports that the administration has quietly given up on them, preferring nebulous goals for which it's easier to claim success.

With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.

The short-term American targets include passage of a $48 billion Iraqi budget, something the Iraqis say they are on their way to doing anyway; renewing the United Nations mandate that authorizes an American presence in the country, which the Iraqis have done repeatedly before; and passing legislation to allow thousands of Baath Party members from Saddam Hussein’s era to rejoin the government. A senior Bush administration official described that goal as largely symbolic since rehirings have been quietly taking place already.

In January, the entire point of the surge, according to President Bush, was to achieve sectarian reconciliation. The surge has had quite a few tactical successes, as would be expected with an infusion of 30,000 troops and a smarter, population-centric approach. But that's an unfortunate footnote to a four-plus-year war -- and one susceptible to reversal -- without political progress, as any half-awake counterinsurgency expert can attest. And, once again, the Bush administration has substituted at least some tangible definition of success for what amounts to a PR strategy. Remember this when Bush and the 2008 GOP presidential candidates praise the surge to high heaven and castigate liberals for opposing its manifest, shining wisdom.

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